At a French InnAt a French Inn
At a French InnAt a French Inn
It is but a short six kilometres to L'Isle-Adam, and it was ten the next morning before we embarked. It is a small town mostly given over to suburban houses of Paris brokers and merchants. It is an attractive enough town as a place of residence, but of works of artistic worth it has practically none, if we except the not very splendid fifteenth-century church.
The largest of the islands here, just above the lock, was formerly occupied by the château of the Prince de Conti. It was destroyed at the Revolution but its place has been taken by a modern villa whose gardens are kept up with remarkable skill and care, albeit it is nothing but a villacoquetteon a large scale. L'Isle-Adam received its name from the Connetable Adam who first built a château here in 1069.
The Forêt de l'Isle-Adam is one of those noble woods in which the north of France abounds. Like the Forêt de Ermenonville, Compiègne, and Chantilly it is beautifully kept, with great roads running straight and silent through avenues of oaks.
The Château de Cassan, but a short distance into the Forêt, has a wonderful formal garden, laid out after the English manner and ranking with the parks of the Trianon and Ermenonville.
After L'Isle-Adam we did not stop, except for the lock at Rougemont, till the smoke-stacks and factory-belchings of Creil loomed up before us thirty kilometres beyond.
Creil is commercial, very commercial, and is a railway junction like Clapham Junction or South Chicago,—no, not quite; nowhere else, on top of the green earth, are there quite such atrocious monuments to man's lack of artistic taste. It is a pity Creil is so banal on close acquaintance, for it is bejewelled with emerald hills and a tiny belt of silvery water which, in the savage days of long ago, must have given it preeminence among similar spots in the neighbourhood.
Just above is Pont St. Maxence, delightfully named and delightfully placed, with a picture church of the best of Renaissance architecture and an atmosphere which made one want to linger within the confines of the town long after his allotted time. We stayed nearly half a day; we ate lunch in a little restaurant in the shadow of the bridge; we bought and sent off picture postcards, and we took snap-shots and strolled about and gazed at the little gem of a place until all the gamins in town were following in our wake.
Compiègne was next in our itinerary. We knew Compiègne, from the shore, as one might say, having passed and repassed it many times, and we knew all its charms and attractions, or thought we did, but we were not prepared for the effect of the rays of the setting sun on the quaintly serrated sky-line of the roof-tops of the city, as we saw it from the river.
It was bloody red, and the willows along the river's bank were a dim purply mélange of all the refuse of an artist's palette. Compiègne has many sides, but its picturesque sunset side is the most theatrical grouping of houses and landscape we had seen for many a long day.
Here at Compiègne the vigour of the Oise ends. Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, while below it broadens out into a workable, industrial sort of a waterway which is doing its best to contribute its share to the prosperity of France.
We learn here, as elsewhere, where it has been attempted, that the hand of man cannot irretrievably make or reclaim the course of a river. Deprived of its natural bed and windings, it will always form new ones of its own making in conformity to the law of nature. The attempt was made to straighten the course of the Oise, but in a very short time the latent energies of the stream, more forceful than were supposed, made fresh windings and turnings, the ultimate development of which was found to very nearly approximate those which had previously been done away with, and so the Canal Lateral, which commences at Compiègne, was built.
Compiègne's attractions are many, its generally well-kept and prosperous air, its most excellent hôtels (two of them, though we bestowed our august patronage on the Hôtel de France), its château of royal days of Louis XV., and its Hôtel de Ville.
Stevenson, in his "Inland Voyage," has said that what charmed him most at Compiègne was the Hôtel de Ville. Truly this will be so with any who have a soul above electric trams and theart nouveau; it is the most dainty and lovable of Renaissance Hôtels de Ville anywhere to be seen, with pignons, and gables, and niches with figures in them jutting out all over it.
Then there is the novel and energetic littlejaquemart, the little bronze figures of which strike the hours and even the halves and quarters. There is not a detail of this charming building, inside or out, which will not be admired by all. It is far and away more interesting in its appeal than the château itself.
Our next day's journey was to Noyon. We were travelling by boat, to be sure, but a good part of the personnel of the hôtel, including the hostler, and the bus-driver, whose business was at the station, came down to see us off. Like a bird in a cage he gazed at us with longing eyes, and once let fall the remark that he wished he had nothing else to do but sit in the bow of a boat and "twiddle a few things" to make it go faster. He overlooked entirely the things that might happen, such as having to pull your boat up on shore and pull out the weeds and rubbish which were stopping your intake pipe, or climb overboard yourself and disentangle water-plants from your propeller, if indeed it had not lost a blade and you were forced to be ignominiously towed into the next large town.
It looks all very delightful travelling about in a dainty and facile littlecanot-automobile, and for our part we were immensely pleased with this, our first, experience of so long a voyage. Nothing had happened to disturb the tranquillity of our journey, not a single mishap had delayed us, and we had not a quarrel with a bargeman or anéclusier, we had been told we should have. We were in luck, and though we only averaged from fifty to sixty kilometres a day, we were all day doing it, and it seemed two hundred.
We lunched at Ribecourt and struck the most ponderously named hotel we had seen in all our travels, and it was good in spite of its weight. "Le Courrier des Pays et des Trois Jambons," or something very like it, was its name, and itspatronnewas glad to see us, and killed a fowl especially on our account, culled some fresh lettuce in the garden, and made a dream of a rum omelette, which she said was the national dish of America. It isn't, as most of us know, but it was a mighty good omelette, nevertheless, and the rum was sufficiently fiery to give it a zest.
We spent that night at Noyon of blessed memory. Noyon is not down in the itineraries of many guide-book tourists, which is a pity for them. It is altogether the most unspoiled old-world town between the Ile de France and the Channel ports of Boulogne and Calais through which so many Anglo-Saxon travellers enter. It is off the beaten track, though, and that accounts for it. Blessed be the tourist agencies which know nothing beyond their regular routes, and thus leave some forgotten and neglected tourist-points yet to be developed.
The majesty of Noyon's cathedral of Notre Dame is unequalled in all the world. The grim towers rise boldly without ornament or decoration of any kind, and are cowled by a peculiarly strange roofing. The triple porch is denuded of its decorative statues, and there is a rank Renaissance excrescence in the rear which is unseemly, but for all that, as a mediæval religious monument of rank, it appeals to all quite as forcibly as the brilliantly florid cathedral at Beauvais, or the richly proud Amiens, its nearest neighbours of episcopal rank.
We did not sit in front of the Hôtel du Nord at Noyon, as did Stevenson, and hear the "sweet groaning of the organ" from the cathedral doorway, but we experienced all the emotions of which he wrote in his "Inland Voyage," and we were glad we came.
The Hôtel de France and the Hôtel du Nord share the custom of the ever-shifting traffic ofvoyageursat Noyon. The latter is the "automobile" hotel, and accordingly possesses many little accessories which the other establishment lacks. Otherwise they are of about the same value, and in either you will, unless you are a very heavy sleeper, think that the cathedral-bells were made to wake the dead, so reverberant are their tones and so frequent their ringing.
It was Stevenson's wish that, if he ever embraced Catholicism, he should be made Bishop of Noyon. Whether it was the simple magnitude of its quaint, straight-lined cathedral, or the generally charming andriantaspect of the town, one does not know, but the sentiment was worthy of both the man and the place.
"Les affaires sont les affaires," as the French say, and business called us to Paris; so, after a happy ten days on the Seine and Oise, we cut our voyage short with the avowed intention of some day continuing it.
Chapter VIThe Road To The North
Chapter VIThe Road To The North
We left Paris by the ghastly route leading out through the plain of Gennevilliers, where Paris empties her sewage and grows asparagus, passing St. Denis and its royal catacombs of the ancient abbey, and so on to Pontoise, all over as vile a stretch of road as one will find in the north of France, always excepting the suburbs of St. Germain.
Pontoise is all very well in its way, and is by no means a dull, uninteresting town, but we had no thoughts for it at the moment; indeed, we had no thoughts of anything but to put the horrible suburban Parispavéas far behind us as we could before we settled down to enjoyment.
At Pontoise we suddenly discovered that we were on the wrong road. So much for not knowing our way out of town—twenty-five kilometres of axle-breaking cobblestones!
We had some consolation in knowing that it was equally as bad by any northern road out of Paris, so we only had the trouble of making a twenty-kilometre detour through the valley of the Oise, by our old haunts of Auvers and L'Isle-Adam to Chantilly and Senlis.
We got our clue to the itinerary of the road to the north from a view of an old poster issued by the "Messageries Royales" just previous to the Revolution (a copy of which is given elsewhere in this book).
Many were the times we, and all well-habituated travellers in France, had swung from Calais to Paris by train, with little thought indeed as to what lay between. True, we had, more than once, "stopped off" at Amiens and Abbeville to see their magnificent churches, and we had spent a long summer at Etaples and Montreuil-sur-Mer, two "artists' haunts" but little known to the general traveller; but we never really knew the lay of the land north of Paris, except as we had got it from the reading of Dumas, Stevenson's "Inland Voyage," and the sentimental journeyings of the always delightful Sterne.
We made Chantilly our stop for lunch,en routeto Senlis. We ought not to have done this, for what with the loafing horse-jockeys in the cafés, and the trainers and "cheap sports" hanging about the hotels, Chantilly does not impress one as the historical shrine that it really is.
Chantilly is sporty,très sportive, as the French call it, as is inevitable of France's most popular race-track, and there is an odour of America, Ireland, and England over all. How many jockeys of these nationalities one really finds at Chantilly the writer does not know, but, judging from the alacrity with which the hotels serve you ham and eggs and the café waiters respond to a demand for whiskey (Scotch, Irish, or American), it may be assumed that the alien population is very large.
We had our lunch at the Hôtel du Grand Condé, which is marked with three stars in the automobile route-books. This means that it is expensive,—and so we found it. It was a good enough hotel of its kind, but there was nothing of local colour about it. It might have been at Paris, Biarritz, or Monte Carlo.
The great attractions of Chantilly are the château and park and the collections of the Duc d'Aumale, famed alike in the annals of history and art. We were properly appreciative, and only barely escaped being carried off by our guide to see the stables—as if we had not suffered enough from the horse craze ever since we had struck the town.
The most we would do was to admire the park and the ramifications of its paths and alleys which dwindled imperceptibly into the great Forêt de Chantilly itself. The forest is one of those vast tracts of wildwood which are so plentifully besprinkled all over France. Their equals are not known elsewhere, for they are crossed and recrossed in all directions by well-kept carriage roads where automobilists will be troubled neither by dust nor glaring sunlight. They are the very ideals of roads, the forest roads of France, and their length is many thousands of kilometres.
Senlis is but eight kilometres from Chantilly. We had no reason for going there at all, except to have a look at its little-known, but very beautiful, cathedral, and to get on the real road to the north.
We spent the night at Senlis, for we had become fatigued with the horriblepavéof the early morning, the sightseeing of the tourist order which we had done at Chantilly, and the eternal dodging of race-horses being exercised all through the streets of the town and the roads of the forest.
"Monsieur descend-il à l'Hôtel du Grand Monarque?" asked a butcher's boy of us, as we stopped the automobile beneath the cathedral tower to get our bearings. He was probably looking for a little commission on our hotel-bill for showing us the way; but, after all, this is a legitimate enough proposition. We told him frankly no; that we were looking for the Hôtel des Arènes; but that he knew nothing of. Another, more enterprising, did, and we drove our automobile into the court of a tiny little commercial-looking hotel, and were soon strolling about the town free from further care for the day. The hotel was ordinary enough, neither good nor bad,comme 'ci, comme ça, the French would call it,—but they made no objection to getting up at six o'clock the next morning and making us fresh coffee which was a dream of excellence. This is a good deal in its favour, for the coffee of the ordinary French country hotel—in the north, in particular—is fearfully and wonderfully made, principally of chicory.
Sentiment would be served, and from Senlis we struck across forty kilometres to what may be called the Dumas Country, Crépy-en-Valois and Villers-Cotterets. Here was a little-trodden haunt which all lovers of romance and history would naturally fall in love with.
Crépy is a snug, conservative little town where life goes on in much the same way that it did in the days when Alexandre Dumas was a clerk here in a notary's office, before he descended upon the Parisian world of letters. His "Mémoires" tell the story of his early experiences here in his beloved Valois country. It is a charming biographical work, Dumas's "Mémoires," and it is a pity it is not better known to English readers. Dumas tells of his journey by road, from the town of his birth, Villers-Cotterets, to Crépy, with his world's belongings done up in a handkerchief on a stick, "in bulk not more grand than the luggage of a Savoyard when he leaves his native mountain home."
Crépy has a delightfully named and equally excellent hotel in the "Trois Pigeons," and one may eat of real country fare and be happy and forget all about the ham and eggs and bad whiskey of Chantilly in the contemplation of omelettes and chickens and fresh, green salads, such as only the country innkeeper in France knows how to serve. Crépy has a château, too, a relic of the days when the town was the capital of apetit gouvernementbelonging to a younger branch of the royal family of France in the fourteenth century. The château is not quite one's ideal of what a great mediæval château should be, but it is sufficiently imposing to give a distinction to the landscape and is in every way a very representative example of the construction of the time.
The greatRoute Nationaleto the north runs through Crépy to-day, as did theRoute Royaleof the days of the Valois. It is eighteen kilometres from Crépy to Villers-Cotterets, Dumas's birthplace. The great romancer describes it with much charm and correctness in the early pages of "The Taking of the Bastile." He calls it "a little city buried in the shade of a vast park planted by François I. and Henri II." It is a place ever associated with romance and history, and, to add further to its reputation, it is but a few kilometres away from La Ferte-Milon, where Racine was born, and only eight leagues from Château-Thierry, the birthplace of La Fontaine.
We had made up our minds to breathe as much of the spirit and atmosphere of Villers-Cotterets as was possible in a short time, and accordingly we settled down for the night at the Hôtel Alexandre Dumas. The name of the hotel is unusual. There may be others similar, but the writer does not recall them at this moment. It was not bad, and, though entitled to be called a grand establishment, it was not given to pomposity or pretence, and we parted with regret, for we had been treated most genially by the proprietor and his wife, and served by a charming young maid, who, we learned, was the daughter of the house. It was all in the family, and because of that everything was excellently done.
There are fragments of a royal château here, begun by François I. in one of his building manias. His salamanders and the three crescents of Diane de Poitiers still decorate its walls, and accordingly it is a historical shrine of the first rank, though descended in these later days to use as a poorhouse.
The château and forest of Villers-Cotterets were settled upon Monsieur le Grand by Louis XIV., after they had sheltered many previous royal loves, but in the days of the later monarchy, that of Philippe Egalité, the place was used merely as a hunting rendezvous.
The Dumas birthplace is an ordinary enough and dismal-looking building from the street. As usual in France, there is another structure in the rear, the real birthplace, no doubt, but one gets only a glimpse through the open door or gate. Carrier-Belleus's fine statue of Dumas, erected here in 1885, is all that a monument of its class should be, and is the pride of the local inhabitant, who, when passing, never tires of stopping and gazing at its outlines. This may be a little exaggeration, but there is a remarkable amount of veneration bestowed upon it by all dwellers in the town.
We went from Villers-Cotterets direct to Soissons, the home of the beans of that name. We do not know these medium-sized flat beans assoissonsin America and England; to us they are merely beans; but tosoissonsthey are known all over France, and in the mind and taste of the epicure there is no other bean just like them. This may be so or not, but there is no possible doubt whatever but that "soissons au beurre" is a ravishing dish which one meets with too infrequently, even in France, and this in spite of the millions of kilos of them which reach the markets through the gateway of the town of Soissons.
Soissons undoubtedly has a good hotel. How could it be otherwise in such a food-producing centre? We were directed, however, by acommis-voyageurwhom we had met at Villers-Cotterets, not to think of a hotel at Soissons, if we were only to stop for lunch, but to go to the railway restaurant. Of all things this would be the most strange for an automobilist, but we took his advice, for he said he knew what he was talking about.
The "Buffet" at the railway station at Soissons is not the only example of a good railway eating-house in France, but truly it is one of the best. It is a marvellously conducted establishment, and you eat your meals in a beautifully designed, well-kept apartment, with the viands of the country of the best and of great variety.Soissons au beurrewas thepièce de résistance, and there waspoulet au casserole, anomelette au rhum, a crisp, cold lettuce salad, and fruits and "biscuits" galore to top off, with wine and breadà discrétionand good coffee and cognac for ten sous additional, the whole totalling three francs fifty centimes. We were probably the first automobilists on tour who had taken lunch at the railway restaurant at Soissons. Perhaps we may not be the last.
It was but a short detour of a dozen or fifteen kilometres to visit the romantic Château de Coucy, one of the few relics of mediævalism which still look warlike. It is more or less of a ruin, but it has been restored in part, and, taken all in all, is the most formidable thing of its kind in existence. It rises above the old walled town of Coucy-le-Château in quite the fashion that one expects, and, from the platform of the donjon, there spreads out a wonderful view over two deep and smiling valleys which, as much as the thickness of the château walls, effectually protected the occupants from a surprise attack.
The thirteenth century saw the birth of this, perhaps the finest example still remaining of France's feudal châteaux, and, barring the effects of an earthquake in 1692, and an attempt by Richelieu to blow it up, the symmetrical outlines of its walls and roofs are much as they always were.
Its founder was Enguerrand III. de Coucy, who took for his motto these boastful words—which, however, he and his descendants justified whenever occasion offered:
"Roi je ne suis,Prince, ni Comte aussi,Je suis le Sire de Coucy."
We left Coucy rejoicing, happy and content, expecting to reach Laon that night. We had double-starred Laon in our itinerary, because it was one of those neglected tourist-points that we always made a point of visiting when in the neighbourhood.
Laon possesses one of the most remarkable cathedrals of Northern France, but its hotels are bad. We tried two and regretted we ever came, except for the opportunity of marvelling at the commanding site of the town and its cathedral. The long zigzag road winding up the hill offers little inducement to one to run his automobile up to the plateau upon which sits the town proper. It were wiser not to attempt to negotiate it if there were any way to avoid it. We solved the problem by putting up at a little hotel opposite the railway station (its name is a blank, being utterly forgotten) where thecommis-voyageurgoes when he wants a meal while waiting for the next train. He seems to like it, and you do certainly get a good dinner, but, not beingcommis-voyageurs, merely automobilists, we were charged three prices for everything, and accordingly every one is advised to risk the dangerous and precipitous road to the upper town rather than be blackmailed in this way.
Laon's cathedral, had it ever been carried out according to the original plans, would have been the most stupendously imposing ecclesiastical monument in Northern France. Possibly the task was too great for accomplishment, for its stones and timbers were laboriously carried up the same zigzag that one sees to-day, and it never grew beyond its present half-finished condition. The year 1200 probably saw its commencement, and it is as thoroughly representative of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic as any other existing example of church building.
On the great massive towers of Laon's cathedral is to be seen a most curious and unchurchly symbolism in the shape of great stone effigies of oxen, pointing north, east, south, and west. There is no religious significance, we are told, but they are a tribute to the faithful services of the oxen who drew the heavy loads of building material from the plain to the hilltop.
We had taken a roundabout road to the north, via Laon, merely to see the oxen of the cathedral and to get swindled for our lunch at that unspeakable little hotel. The one was worth the time and trouble, the other was not. We left town the same night headed north, in the direction of Arras, via St. Quentin, anciently one of the famous walled towns of France, but now a queer, if picturesque, conglomeration of relics of a historical past and modern business affairs.
It was Sunday, and well into the afternoon, when we got away from Laon, but the peasant, profiting by the fair harvest days, was working in the fields as if he never had or would have a holiday. Unquestionably the peasant and labouring class in France is hard-working at his daily task and at his play, for when he plays he also plays hard. This, the eternal activity of the peasant or labourer, whatever his trade, and the worked-over little farm-holdings, with their varied crops, all planted in little bedquilt patches, are the chief characteristics of the French countryside for the observant stranger.
We crossed the Oise at La Fere, La Fere of wicked memory, as readers of Stevenson will recall. Nothing went very badly with us, but all the same the memory of Stevenson's misadventure at his hotel made us glad we were not stopping there.
We passed now innumerable little towns and villages clinging to red, brown, and green hillsides, with here and there a thatched cottage of other days, for, in theagglomérations, as the French government knows the hamlets and towns, it is now forbidden to thatch or rethatch a roof; you must renew it with tiles or slates when the original thatch wears out.
Soon after passing La Fere one sees three hilltop forts, for we are now in more or less strategic ground, and militarism is rampant.
St. Quentin has been the very centre of a warlike maelstrom for ages, and the memory of blood and fire lies over all its history, though to-day, as we entered its encumbered, crooked streets, things looked far from warlike.
We had our choice of the Hôtel du Cygne or the Hôtel du Commerce at St. Quentin, and chose the latter as being nearer the soil, whereas the former establishment is blessed with electric lights, acalorifère, and a "bar"—importing the word and the institution from England or America.
We found nothing remarkable in the catering of the Hôtel du Commerce. It was good enough of its kind, but not distinctive, and we got beer served with our dinner, instead of wine or cider. If you want either of the latter you must pay extra. We were in the beer region, not the cider country or the wine belt. It was the custom, and was not being "sprung" on us because we were automobilists. This we were glad to know after our experience at Laon.
St. Quentin possesses a famous Gothic church, known to all students of Continental architecture, and there is a monument of the siege of 1557, which is counted another "sight," though strictly a modern work.
At St. Quentin one remarks the Canal de St. Quentin, another of those inland waterways of France which are the marvel of the stranger and the profit of the inhabitant. This particular canal connects France with the extraterritorial commerce of the Pays Bas, and runs from the Somme to the Scheldt, burrowing through hillsides with tunnels, and bridging gaps and valleys with viaducts. One of these canal-tunnels, at Riqueval, has a length of nearly four miles.
We worried our way out through the crooked streets of St. Quentin at an early hour the next morning,en routefor Arras, via Cambrai. Forty-two kilometres of "ond. dure.," but otherwise excellent roadway, brought us to Cambrai. (For those who do not read readily the French route-book directions the above expression is translated as "rolling and difficult.")
It matters little whether the roadways of France are marked rolling and serpentine, or hilly and winding, the surfaces are almost invariably excellent, and there is nothing met with which will annoy the modern automobile or its driver in the least, always excepting foolish people, dogs, and children. For the last we sometimes feel sorry and take extra precautions, but the others are too intolerant to command much sympathy.
Cambrai was burned into our memories by the recollection that Fénélon was one-time bishop of the episcopal see, and because it was the city of the birth and manufacture of cambric, most of which, since its discovery, has gone into the making of bargain-store handkerchiefs.
Cambrai possessed twelve churches previous to the Revolution, but only two remain at the present day, and they are unlovely enough to belong to Liverpool or Sioux City.
We had some difficulty in finding a hotel at Cambrai. Our excellent "Guide-Michelin" had for the moment gone astray in the tool-box, and there was nothing else we could trust. We left the automobile at the shop of amécanicienfor a trifling repair while we hunted up lunch. (Cost fifteen sous, with no charge for housing the machine. Happy, happy automobilists of France; how much you have to be thankful for!)
The Mouton Blanc, opposite the railway station at Cambrai, gave us a very good lunch, in a strictlybourgeoisfashion, including the sticky, bitterbière du Nord. We paid two francs fifty centimes for our repast and went away with a good opinion of Cambrai, though its offerings for the tourist in the way of remarkable sights are few.
Cambrai to Arras was a short thirty kilometres. We covered them in an hour and found Arras all that Cambrai was not, though both places are printed in the same size type in the railway timetables and guide-books.
Arras has a combined Hôtel de Ville and belfry which puts the market-house and belfry of Bruges quite in the shade from an impressive architectural point of view. There is not the quiet, splendid severity of its more famous compeer at Bruges, but there is far more luxuriance in its architectural form, and, at any rate, it was a surprise and a pleasure to find that any such splendid monument were here.
The Spanish invasion of other days has left its mark all through Flanders, and here at Arras the florid Renaissance architecture of the Hôtel de Ville and the vaults and roofs of the market-square are manifestly exotics from a land strange to French architectural ways.
Arras, with its quaint old arcaded market-place, is a great distributing-point for cereals. A million of francs' worth in value changes hands here in a year, and the sale, in small lots, out in the open, is a survival of themoyen âgewhen the abbés of a neighbouring monastery levied toll for the privilege of selling on the market-place. Today the toll-gatherer, he who collects the small fee from the stall-owners, is still known as the Abbé.
Arras is quaint and interesting, and withal a lively, progressive town, where all manner of merchandizing is conducted along very businesslike lines. You can buy sewing-machines and agricultural machinery from America at Arras, and felt hats and orange marmalade (which the Frenchman calls, mysteriously, simply, "Dundee") from Britain.
To Douai, from Cambrai, was another hour's run. Douai has a Hôtel de Ville and belfry, too, which were entirely unlooked for. Quaint, remarkable, and the pet and pride of the inhabitant, the bells of the belfry of Bible-making Douai ring out rag-time dances and Sousa marches. Such is the rage for up-to-dateness!
There is a goodly bit to see at Douai in the way of ecclesiastical monuments, but the chief attraction, that which draws strangers to the place, is the July "Fête de Gayant," at which M. and Mme. Gayant (giant), made of wickerwork and dressed more or lessà la mode, are promenaded up and down the streets to the tune of the "Air de Gayante." All this is in commemoration of an unsuccessful attempt to capture the city by Louis XI. in 1479. The fête has been going on yearly ever since, and shows no signs of dying out, as does the Guy Fawkes celebration in England.
We were now going through France's "black country," the coal-fields of the north, and the gaunt scaffolds of the mine-pits dotted the landscape here and there, as they do in Pennsylvania or the Midlands of England. They did not especially disfigure the landscape, but gave a modern note of industry and prosperity which was as marked as that of the farmyards of the peasants and high-farmers of Normandy or La Beance. France is an exceedingly wealthy, and, what is more, a "self-contained" nation; and this fact should not be forgotten by the critics of what they like to calleffete Europe.
Bethune is in the heart of the coal country, and is not a particularly lovely town. It has a dream of an old-world hotel, though, and one may go a great deal farther and fare a great deal worse than at Bethune's Hôtel du Nord, a great rambling, stone Renaissance building, with heavy decorated window-frames, queer rambling staircases, and ponderous, beamed ceilings.
It sits on a littlePlace, opposite an isolated belfry, from whose upper window there twinkles, at night, a little star of light, like a mariner's beacon. What it is all supposed to represent no ones seems to know, but it is an institution which dies hard, and some one pays the expense of keeping it alight. A belfry is a very useful adjunct to a town. If the writer ever plans a modern city he will plant a belfry in the very centre, with four clock-faces on it, a sun-dial, a thermometer, and a peal of bells. You find all these things on the belfry of Bethune, and altogether it is the most picturesque, satisfying, and useful belfry the writer has ever seen.
The food and lodging of the Hôtel du Nord at Bethune are as satisfactory as its location, and we were content indeed to remain the following day in the dull little town, because of a torrential downpour which kept us house-bound till four in the afternoon. If one really wants to step back into the dark ages, just let him linger thirty-six hours as we did at Bethune. More would probably drive him crazy with ennui, but this is just enough.
The road to the north ended for us at Calais. How many know Calais as they really ought? To most travellers Calais is a mere guide-post on the route from England or France.
Of less interest to-day, to the London tripper, than Boulogne and its debatable pleasures, Calais is a very cradle of history and romance.
It was in October, 1775, that Sterne set out on his immortal "sentimental journey." He put up, as the tale goes, at Dessein's Hôtel at Calais (now pulled down), and gave it such a reputation among English-speaking people that its proprietor suddenly grew rich beyond his wildest hopes. So much for the publicity of literature, which, since Sterne's days, has boomed soap, cigars, and automobiles.
Sterne's familiarity with France was born of experience. He had fallen ill in London while supervising the publication of some of his literary works and was ordered to the south of France by his physicians. He obtained a year's absence from his curacy, and borrowed twenty pounds from his friend Garrick (which history, or rumour, says he never repaid) and left for—of all places—Paris, where a plunge into the whirl of social dissipation nearly carried him off his feet.
Sterne and Stevenson have written more charmingly of France and things French than any others in the English tongue, and if any one would like to make three little pilgrimages off the beaten track, by road or rail, by bicycle or automobile, let him follow the trail of Sterne in his "Sentimental Journey," or Stevenson in his "Inland Voyage" and his "Travels with a Donkey." They do not follow the "personally conducted" tourist routes, but they give a much better idea of France to one who wants to see things for himself.
Charles Dibdin, too, "muddled away five months at Calais," to quote his own words. He arrived from England after a thirteen-hours' passage in a gale of wind, in which he composed his most famous sea-song, "Blow High, Blow Low." Travellers across the channel have been known to occupy thirteen hours on the passage since Dibdin's time, and seemingly, in the experience of the writer, there is not a time when the words of the song might not apply.
We had come to Calais for the purpose of crossing the Channel for a little tour awheel amid the natural beauties and historic shrines of Merry England.
It takes fifty-five minutes, according to the Railway-Steamship time-cards, to make the passage from Calais to Dover, but the writer has never been able to make one of these lightning passages.
Automobiles are transported by the mail-boats only upon "special arrangements," information upon which point is given so vaguely that one suspects bribery and craft.
We did not bite, but went over by the night cargo-boat, at least the automobile did, at a cost of a hundred francs. This is cheap or dear, according to the way you look at it. For the service rendered it is dear, for the accommodation to you it is, perhaps, cheap enough. At any rate, it is cheap enough when you want to get awayfromEngland again, its grasping hotel-keepers, and its persecuting police.
Why do so many English automobilists tour abroad, Mr. British Hotel-keeper and Mr. Police Sergeant? One wonders if you really suspect.
Part IIIOn Britain's RoadsChapter IThe Bath Road
Part IIIOn Britain's RoadsChapter IThe Bath Road
The Bath Road
The Bath Road
The Bath Road is in many ways the most famed main road out of London. Visions as varied as those of highwaymen on Hounslow Heath, boating at Maidenhead, the days of the "dandies" at Bath, and of John Cabot at Bristol flashed through our minds whenever we heard the Bath road mentioned, so we set out with a good-will on the hundred and eighteen mile journey to Bath.
To-day the road's designation is the same as of yore, though Palmer's coaches, that in 1784 left London at eight in the morning and arrived at Bristol at eleven at night, have given way to automobiles which make the trip in three hours. You can be three hours or thirty, as you please. We figured it out for thirty-six and lunched, dined, slept, and breakfasteden route, and felt the better for it.
The real popularity of the Bath road and its supremacy in coaching circles a century and a quarter ago—a legacy which has been handed down to automobilists of to-day—was due to the initiative of one John Palmer, a gentleman of property, who had opened a theatre at Bath, and was sorely annoyed at the delays he had to submit to in obtaining star actors from London to appear on particular nights. Palmer was a man with a grievance, but he was also a man with ability and purpose. He travelled about, and made notes and observations, and organized a scheme by which coaching might be brought into a complete system; he memorialized the government, was opposed by the post-office authorities, abused, sneered at, laughed at, but not beaten; finally he gained the ear of William Pitt, who saw that there was more in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol, and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point. The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages, marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads. The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator—a very safe contract indeed—by which he was to have two and one-half per cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. This would have yielded twenty thousand pounds a year; so the government broke its agreement, refused to vote the payment, and compromised with Mr. Palmer and its own conscience, after the fashion of politicians of all time, by a grant of fifty thousand pounds.
The Bath road traverses a section of England that is hardly as varied as would be a longer route from north to south, but, on the whole, it is characteristically English throughout, and is as good an itinerary as any by which to make one's first acquaintance with English days and English ways.
Via Hammersmith, Kew Bridge, Brentford, and Hounslow was our way out of town, and a more awful, brain-racking, and discouraging start it would have been impossible to make. London streets are ever difficult to thread with an automobile, and when the operation is undertaken on a misty, moisty morning with what the Londoner knows asgreasethick under foot and wheel, the process is fraught with the possibility of adventure.
Out through Piccadilly and Knightsbridge was bad enough, but, by the time Hammersmith Broadway, its trams and tram-lines and its butchers' and bakers' and milk carts, was reached and passed, it was as if one had been trying to claw off a lee shore in a gale, and driver and passengers alike felt exceeding limp and sticky. The Londoner who drives an automobile thinks nothing of it, and covers the intervening miles with a cool clear-headedness that is marvellous. We were new to automobiling in England, but we were fast becoming acclimated.
On through Chiswick there were still the awful tram-lines, but the roadway improved and was wider and free from abrupt turns and twists. We congratulated ourselves that at last we had got clear of town, but we had reckoned beyond our better judgment, for we had forgotten that we had been told that Brentford was the most awful death-trap that the world has known for automobilists, cyclists, and indeed foot-passers as well. We should have kept a little of our nerve by us, for we needed it when we got shut in between a brewer's dray, an omnibus, and an electric tram-car in Brentford's sixteen-foot "main road." It was like an interminable canyon, gloomy, damp, and dangerous for all living things which passed its portals, this main street of Brentford. For some miles, apparently, this same congestion of traffic continued, a tram-car ahead and behind you, drays, trucks, and carts all around you, and fool butchers' cart and milk cart drivers turning unexpected corners to the likely death of you and themselves. Here is an automobile reform which might well attract the attention of the authorities in England. The automobile has as much right to be a road user as any other form of traffic, and, if the automobile is to be regulated as to its speed and progress, it is about time that the same regulations were applied also to other classes of traffic.
We finally got out of Brentford and came to Low, where suburban improvement has gone to widen the roadway and put the two lines of tramway in the middle, allowing a free passage on either side. The wood pavement, which we had followed almost constantly since leaving London, soon disappeared, and, finally, so did the tramway. After perhaps fifteen miles we were at last approaching open country; at least Suburbia and perambulators had been left behind; and truck-gardens and market-wagons, often with sleepy drivers, had entered on the scene. Here was a new danger, but not so terrible as those we had left behind, and the poor, docile horse usually had sense enough to draw aside and let us pass, even if the beer-drowsy driver had not.
We soon reached the top of Hounslow Heath, but there was scarcely a suggestion of the former romantic aspect which we had always connected with it.
We made inquiries and learned that there was one old neighbouring inn, the "Green Man," lying between the Bath and Exeter roads, which was a true relic of the past, and musty with the traditions of turnpike travellers and highwaymen of old. We found the "Green Man" readily enough, with a country yokel to point the way, for which he expected the price of a beer. In the palmy days of the robbing and murdering traffic of Hounslow Heath it was a convenient refuge for the Duvals and Turpins, and they made for it with a rush on occasion, secreting themselves in a hiding-place which can still be seen.
This is in a little room on the left of the front door, and the entrance lies at the back of an old-fashioned fireplace. A hole leads to a passage which opens into a cavernous recess beneath, to which there is ample room for anybody to descend. The local wiseacres declare that there is, or was, a communication between this secret chamber and another famous highwayman's inn, the old "Magpie" directly on the Bath road, and that those who preyed on travellers used to bolt from one house to the other like hunted rabbits. No one seemingly has himself ever explored this mysterious subterranean passage. Beyond Hounslow, on the Bath road, one passes through Slough, leaving Windsor, Runnymede, and Datchet on the left, as properly belonging to the routine tours which one makes from London and calls simply excursions.
The Thames is reached at Maidenhead, where up-river society plays a part which reminds one of the stage melodramas, except that there is real water and real boat-races. It is a pretty enough aspect up and down the river from the bridge at Maidenhead, but it is stagey and artificial.
The hotels and restaurants of Maidenhead make some pretence of catering to automobilists, and do it fairly well, after a suburban fashion, but there is nothing of the flavour or sentiment of the old inn-keeping days, neither are any of the establishments at all what the touring automobilist (as distinct from the promenading, or half-day excursion variety) expects and demands.